| | PHI101: Reflective EssayConsistency, Bishop Berkeley, Consistency
by Anna Marie H.
“Does possessing an Empiricist Epistemology as well as a belief in God necessarily lead to Idealism?” is the question at hand. Despite many lengthy hours spent within the realms of Berkeley, I find myself unconvinced of the subsequent necessity of Idealism.
To give credit where it is due, Berkeley did do a superb job debunking the materialist position of his contemporary John Locke in his Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous. As an empiricist, Berkeley began by asserting what was, for him, a basic premise: that the only way we know things is through sense experience. He first argued in his hot/cold water example that secondary qualities are completely subjective and exist only in the mind (something that Locke had already admitted) but he pushes further (Pojman, 185-189). Locke put forth the argument that the primary qualities of an object add up to create its “extension”, something which we are unable to affect no matter what we do to the object itself. Extension is impossible without material, therefore we know matter exists and we can trust that our ideas are correct when it comes to the experiencing the world (Pojman, 176-182). This is where Berkeley disagrees. Philonous (Berkeley’s own idealist voice of the dialogue) proceeds to explain to Hylas (the materialist) that primary qualities are absolutely dependent upon our mind’s perceptions and therefore are not an “extension” of the object itself (Pojman, 190). If Locke were to be consistent with the basic empiricist premise, primary qualities would be no different than secondary qualities as far as our perceptions are concerned. Because we can have no knowledge of material substance, there is no way to assert that it exists, and therefore only our ideas exist. “Sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit,” Philonous states, and Hylas is forced to agree (Pojman, 191).
So far, so good for Berkeley, but now we enter the splitting hairs part. Berkely goes on to insist that (1) Real things (ideas) continue to exist even when no one is perceiving them, (2) Real things (ideas) must be being perceived by something other than people, and (3) That something is the infinite mind of God. Such an easy hop, jump, and skip right? When one shuts and then opens his eyes, the world would appear to have remained the same. All the laws of motion, nature, morality, etc. seem to be functioning just as before, and the clocks still keep time. Obviously, if everything is an idea as has been argued, and if all ideas must be perceived, something must be perceiving them in order for things to continue to exist even when humans are sleeping or comatose, etc. The only answer for this the omnipotent, infinite mind of God. Everything in this world continues to exist because God perceives all of it all the time (Pojman, 191).
Enter the skeptic. “What evidence is there to lead us to believe that all things do indeed continue to exist when no person is there perceiving them?” he might ask. “How can any empiricist know that a room remains as it is when he is no longer experiencing it with his own mind?” he might demand. If one only knows from perceiving, how can one know that the world continues to revolve when he does not perceive its continuous revolving? Why could it not just stop, and start up again once we finished blinking? Berkeley has successfully argued that ideas are indeed real and that ideas must be perceived to exist, but he has no argument for why there must be someone else beside himself perceiving them.
Just as we cannot experience someone else’s experiencing and we therefore cannot know that they, indeed, perceive; we cannot experience God’s experiencing so we cannot know that He exists. That is Berkeley’s pitfall. If we gave him his premise, the others would, indeed, follow decently enough, but his premise is unsound.
I also discovered what would seem to be another hole in the Idealist argument (or at least Berkeley’s version of it) while researching outside of Pojman. According to Daniel E. Flage, a professor of philosophy at James Madison University, it would seem that Berkeley had a rather un-empiricist take on any sort of knowledge of the mind’s existence. Flage sites a few quotes from Berkeley’s Dialagues (“George Berkeley,” Section 5):
I own I have properly no idea, either of God or any other spirit; for these being active, cannot be represented by things perfectly inert, as our ideas are. I do nevertheless know, that I who am a spirit or thinking substance, exist as certainly, as I know my ideas exist. Farther, I know what I mean by the terms I and myself; and I know this immediately, or intuitively, though I do not perceive it as I perceive a triangle, a colour, or a sound. (DHP3 2:231, all editions)
How often must I repeat, that I know or am conscious of [my emphasis] my own being; and that I my self am not my ideas, but somewhat else, a thinking active principle that perceives, knows, wills, and operates about ideas. (DHP3 233, 1734 edition)
Reading these statements, it would seem that Berkeley would be in possession of knowledge which would be intuitive instead of based on experience, causing him to be, once again, in departure of his empiricist epistemology.
Given all of this, I am rather persuaded that Hylas would be correct after all. Berkeley’s empiricist arguments, if followed consistently, would eventually lead us straight to skepticism instead of idealism. You can’t really know anything. Indeed we have no reason to assume anything at all in this world, as we have no reason to assume that any one cause will result in any one effect. Unless we can experience every single instance of the sun rising in the past, present, and future, we can not assume that it will do so tomorrow. We act upon habit and custom, but there is no logical reason why there should be a cause for every effect and vice versa. (Pojman, 199-201)
As such an empiricist, one is free to believe in God if one should want to. One is also free to believe in purple elephants if one should want to. However, one cannot claim to know that either God or purple elephants exist based upon any sort of “intuition” (as Berkeley wants to do) as there is no way for one to perceive one’s intuitions. Not only that, but Berkeley has no way to perceive that he has a mind or anything else besides his own perceptions. The “intuitions” he has of his mind or God’s hold no weight in the realm of the empiricist. One cannot know that there is anything to regulate one’s perceptions, so one is left to live a life in which the sun rising in the west should cause no surprise –as the belief that the sun always rises in the east is based on faith alone. Of course, one could do so while living in a world where everyone else could just as easily perceive the sun rising in the north. This is, of course, providing that anyone else is capable of having his own perceptions and therefore capable of forming habits and customs to have faith in but not absolute knowledge.
Work Cited
Flage, Daniel E. “George Berkeley.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/berkeley.htm 2006
Pojman, Louis P., ed. Philosophy: The Quest for Truth. 6th edition. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. |
